I Trust My Students

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2018 Chronicles Funding Drive

ALL DONATIONS DOUBLED

$61,016

Donated

$80,000

Goal

The Chronicles brings you teachings, tributes and a place to study and practice

Keep Us Chronicling!

Thank you to the Pema Chodron Foundation and other supporters for providing matching funds. All donations will be doubled.

Funds raised during this campaign will support the work of the Chronicles and Ocean. The Chronicles brings you teachings, stories, tributes and news. Ocean is a place to study and practice.

Our support comes only from you, our readers and listeners

“The point is,” he said to me,“I trust my students.”

There is, for me, no greater single statement of the unique quality of Rinpoche’s profound teaching than these four words. His conviction in this trust flowed from his every pore, expressed itself in his every gesture, and was delivered upon every student he encountered. So few teachers since have understood how this trust is the indispensable foundation for genuine transmission of the dharma to take place. To encounter and experience this trust in our lifetime—by direct contact with him when he was alive or now through his teachings—is the epitome of being well-favored. I continue to feel humbled by our good fortune.

Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche was unique among Buddhist teachers who came to the West. He was one of the first Asian-born teachers to present the dharma in English, using a vocabulary that included slang and idiom that spoke directly to the experience of thousands of students, and that formed the basis for the language that would be used to present the Buddhist teachings for decades to come. He was able to transmit the essence of the traditional teachings in language, forms, and institutions that made them intimately accessible to a contemporary audience. Trungpa Rinpoche is well known for fashioning many new forms of practice in this process.

The way the Dorje Dradül worked with the Dorje Kasung was consistent with how he taught throughout his life: with directness, intimacy, and trust. He established a deep sense of comradeship with his students, and this comradeship deepened as he worked alongside them, often around the clock for days on end, in creating many of the organizations that made up the Shambhala community. As a teacher, guide, and friend, his every gesture expressed confidence in his students’ innate intelligence. “You can do it” was the familiar refrain.

I experienced a shocking expression of his trust in mein all his studentsthat has stayed with me since. I also witnessed the clear message he delivered to a fellow Tibetan teacher: that for the genuine dharma to be transmitted in the West, the teachers presenting the dharma had to have the same openness and trust in their students that their own teachers in Tibet had showed to them.

The Dorje Dradül’s trust in his students was at the core of his entire approach to teaching the dharma. He expressed his trust as an unshakeable conviction in the basic goodness and buddha nature of everyone he came into contact with. This nurtured a genuine confidence in the hearts of all of his students. The Dorje Dradül felt that such trust needed to be the basis of the relationship between teacher and student, and was necessary for genuine communication about the dharma to take place. The Dorje Dradül warned that without such trust it would be hard for students to overcome spiritual materialism, and this would lead to external confirmation of ego rather than genuine spiritual insight.

James Gimian, one of the principal leaders of the Dorje Kasung from 1977 to 1997, is currently the publisher of Mindful and the owner of Trident Publications, which has released a number of titles by Chogyam Trungpa. Jim is also a member of the Denma Translation Committee (see: the Art of War by Sun Tzu), and the coauthor of Rules of Victory, an upcoming Shambhala Publications release on the Art of War (March 2008).

Collected Vajradhatu Seminaries 1973- 1985: Vajrayana eBook

A truly remarkable resource for researchers, scholars and students, the Collected Vajradhatu Seminaries 1973–1985: Vajrayana eBook, are the searchable transcripts of the vajrayana talks given by Vidyadhara Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche at all thirteen seminaries.

Rabjam Rinpoche traveled to the United States twice with his grandfather, Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche, where they visited Trungpa Rinpoche and his community of students. Here are a few of his memories from those visits.

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The Chronicles of Chögyam Trungpa is a celebration of his life, an exploration of his teachings, a study of his legacy and influences, and a community of people who share a common interest in his life and work. Learn More.